Case Number 07395: Small Claims Court

FULL FRAME DOCUMENTARY SHORTS (VOLUME 3)

The Charge

Now entering Realitywood...

Facts of the Case

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is known for its intimacy and
hospitality. Perhaps the nature of the documentary style invites this intimacy.
Perhaps it is due to the professionalism of founder Nancy Buirski, festival
director Robyn Yigit Smith, and the dedicated core staff. Maybe the backing of a
board with Big Names helps. Whatever the reason, Full Frame is expansive, but
fosters a pleasant, down-to-earth attitude.

Even so, there was a fair amount of adrenaline in the air at this year's
festival. People talked in heated tones about the war in Iraq. Aspiring
filmmakers found quiet corners to talk with studio reps. The buzz was palpable
when Martin Scorsese and Ric Burns showed up. Excited fans asked Walter Mosley
for his autograph, which he gave with aplomb. Everywhere you looked, people were
talking about the films they'd seen, or wanted to see; had made, or wanted to
make.

It is of course impossible to capture the energy of Full Frame on a lifeless
disc. Documentaries are by nature personal; the experience is enriched by
talking about how a film made you feel in the lobby with other festival goers,
or even at the filmmaker party with the filmmaker herself. The problem is
compounded by the limited space on a DVD: There simply isn't room for all of the
stories. Film distribution plays its part as well. Is Murderball going to
be on next year's Volume Four? Doubtful, not after the press it has
generated.

For these reasons, the six short films below are not representative of the
overall 2004 Full Frame experience. Six films cannot begin to represent all of
the stories that screened at last year's festival. Nonetheless, they manage to
suggest the emotional breadth of the documentary and give us a glimpse into what
compels documentarians and their fans.

* A Thousand Words (Melba Williams, 9 minutes)A Thousand
Words won the Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short. I can see why, though it
isn't my favorite film on this disc: Melba's father took a camera with him to
Vietnam and covertly filmed what he saw. The gleaming path of tracer bullets is
beautiful, until you figure out what you're seeing and where the bullets are
landing. Helicopters haul nets full of bodies through the air. Furtive glimpses
at Williams's fellow soldiers reveal dumfounded horror, fear, and resolve. The
war has never been closer, or more real.

This footage is surrounded by a narrative about Melba's tardy attempts to
learn about her father's traumatic past: He suffered a stroke and cannot fully
communicate with her now about the images he took. The "too late to
ask" theme obviously resonated with people at the festival, but I found it
distasteful. He obviously does not want to relive those times, and I wanted her
to leave him alone. Let people's reticence to speak speak for them.

* The Great Cheesesteak Debate (Scott Vosbury, 13 minutes) As a
native North Carolinian, I can only imagine how a similar documentary might
depict North Carolinians and the war between Eastern, Western, and
Lexington-style barbecue. That's the beauty of The Great Cheesesteak
Debate; it probably isn't about your home town, but you can see in it the
needling and "friendly" debate that might surround your local cuisine.
Vosbury captures Philly's segregated camps of cheesesteak lovers with humor and
insight. Be it drunk college kids hurling insults across the street as they
stand in long lines at competing delis Pat's and Geno's, or grizzled veterans
who have been patronizing their chosen joint for decades, the rivalry is
vigorous in this amusing distillation of local strife.

* Rosalie's Journey (Warwick Thornton, 23 minutes)Rosalie's
Journey is more in line with what I'd hoped to find: a cohesive, meaningful
look at someone else's life. In this case, that person is Ngarla Kunoth, the
star of Chauvel's 1955 film Jedda. Ngarla, a.k.a. Rosalie, was perfectly
happy to live in the Australian outback with her fellow Aborigines. When her
father sent her to Catholic school, it began a strange journey to movie stardom.
Thornton tells this tale with an eye toward cultural misunderstandings, how
Western assumptions unknowingly forced a young girl to violate her tribal law.
The raw beauty of the Outback is shown, but not dwelled upon. Likewise, Western
cultural attitudes are condemned, but Westerners are not vilified. The end
result is a balanced story that never strays too far from Rosalie's story.

* Texas Hospitality (Michael Pfaendtner, 4 minutes) This short
film resembles a fancy PowerPoint presentation set to ironic music. As a jaunty
ditty plays in the background, pictures of ten death-row inmates march by, along
with their crimes and what they ate for their last meals. Texas
Hospitality is a succinct statement about capital punishment; it milks the
gag for what it's worth, and lets go before it gets old.

* Journeys (Vinayan Kodoth, 39 minutes)Journeys was
harder for me to get into than the other documentaries because it feels like a
dusty old National Geographic travelogue you might have watched in elementary
school. Once Kodoth's point becomes clear, the documentary gets much more
interesting. Through the universal experience of travel, Kodoth reveals what
life in Bombay is like. Passengers literally fight each other to get on and off
of trains that are full to bursting with human cargo. People near windows smile
with relief; some choose the far more dangerous, but less crowded, option of
sitting on the curved train roofs or straddling the junctions between cars. Boat
travel and car travel are just as unappealing, especially when contrasted
against the urban waste nearby. I found myself wondering what would compel a man
to face death by sitting on top of a speeding train car.

* Foxhole (Franko Galoso, 26 minutes)Foxhole is great
on its own, but even more impressive as a student work. Galoso details the lives
of two Vietnam vets who connected powerfully with each other in the midst of the
chaos. As they tell their story, we learn something about our country and its
values in a nonpreachy venue. Foxhole is not exactly lighthearted, but
its warmth and honesty are most welcome.

The six short documentaries on this disc offer mixed visual styles and
techniques, ranging from classic full-frame film to widescreen digital
"mixed media," but they all get the job done. Each film has credits
and a filmmaker biography. The focus of this year's festival was "Why
War?" so I expect next year's crop of documentaries to have a harder edge
than did these. If you prefer Realitywood to Hollywood, consider stopping by
Durham next spring for the 2006 festival.